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Earlier this year, I was among the MMi staff writers who began covering Apple's slow but gradually escalating attention on those who prey on domain names looking to financially capitalize on their possession in the future - domain name squatters, if you will.

In January, for example, Apple reclaimed - by legal force - a number of domain names that Apple felt crossed certain "boundaries" relating to intellectual property and copyrights. For instance, the domains "blueipod.com," "iphonecheap.com," "iphonetoys.com," and "ipodaccessories.info" were all wrangled away from the man who first purchased them and rewarded to Apple instead.

Today, the battle against both domain and app store name squatters rages on. Thanks to the changes divulged from the release of the development guidelines for the App Store, developers who reserve an app name without uploading a binary within a reasonable period of time will have their records swiftly deleted. What's a reasonable time frame you ask? According to Apple, that would be about 120 days. According to a report from our friends at Tech Crunch, after 90 days have passed, developers will be notified by Apple that the time to act is drawing near and that if there is no upload within 30 days, "the app name will then be available for another developer to use."

This move on the part of Apple is just one of many new tweaks and additions to longstanding policy. From finally sanctioning some significant third-party development tools to making the once completely non-transparent app approval process more visible to developers, the notoriously strict and hush-hush Apple has been surprisingly candid and - dare I say - chilled out in recent weeks.